


The Lion

by Dardrea



Series: Fluffy Hiatus Sunday Ficlets [8]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV), Rumbelle - Fandom
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Hiatus Sunday Fluff 2014 - 2015
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-15
Updated: 2015-02-15
Packaged: 2018-03-13 00:20:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3360815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dardrea/pseuds/Dardrea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Week 9 of the Hiatus Sunday Fluff.  Rumpel has a problem. Belle helps.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lion

“Rumpelstiltskin—what _are_ you doing?” she demanded, watching wide-eyed as he hopped around his work room, frantically waving one hand and saying something in a foreign tongue. His words cut off as soon as he was aware of her but the hopping and waving didn’t.

Perhaps it was part of a strange spell?

“Rumpel?” she tried again when he neither stopped nor answered her.

“It hurts!” he gritted through his teeth, finally standing still, though he kept waving.

She blinked. “Uhm…what hurts?”

“The _thorn_ in my _hand!_ ” he snarled, as though it was obvious and she was an idiot for not having seen it.

She rolled her eyes. “Well how was I supposed to know that if you keep waving it like—”

Suddenly his hand was in front of her and she winced. This was no simple rose thorn; it was practically a spear head, an inch thick at the woody base, two inches sticking out of his palm and probably at least as much piercing through his flesh. As he turned his hand she could see the pointed end had sliced clean through and out the other side. Blood seeped sluggishly around the invader, but something, either his dark blood itself or some property of the thorn, was smoking and even, she cocked her head, yes, _sizzling_.

“Oh my,” she said.

He pulled his hand closer to himself and then started shaking it again. “Yes. _Oh, my_. Thank you so much for your opinion. Don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“Well why don’t you just magic it away?”

“It’s a magic thorn, _dearie_. You don’t just _magic_ _away_ a magic thorn. Don’t you think I would have already, if it was that easy?”

She sighed. “Well is there any reason you can’t just pull it out then?”

He froze, clutching his hand against his chest and giving her a startling sincere look of panic and betrayal.

“It’ll hurt,” he said faintly.

“More than leaving it in?”

He opened his mouth to answer but didn’t say anything. His face screwed up and then smoothed into his haughtiest and most dismissive expression. “I have it under control,” he said. “You may go.”

“Rumpelstiltskin—”

“You may _go_ ,” he said firmly. But she noticed he didn’t use his magic to send her away as he usually did when he was particularly grumpy or when she’d pushed him too far.

“Oh, Rumpel,” she said gently.

He put his wounded hand behind his back and took a step away from her.

She fought a smile and took a step towards him.

He cleared his throat, drawing himself up, remembering perhaps that he was the Dark One and wouldn’t be chased across his own work room by his own little maid. “Whatever you are thinking about doing, dearie, forget it. I can still turn you into a toad, you know!”

She took another step and it put them practically toe-to-toe since he’d decided he was too proud to run. “Can you, really? I suspect that thorn in your hand is interfering with your magic or you would already have sent me on my way—don’t bother to argue,” she said when he opened his mouth, and he closed it again with an audible click. “Have you ever heard the story of the servant and the lion?”

“The lion?” he asked, his voice shrill as she reached for his face with both hands.

She nodded. “And the servant,” she said, leaning up to press her lips to his. He exhaled a startled breath and for one moment was still as stone under her lips. Then he slowly leaned in, tilting his head, startling her with how… _pleasant_ it was. Yes, pleasant was a word.

Then he yelped and jumped away from her, glaring.

She bit her lip, trying to look more contrite than she felt. “Sorry?” she said, carefully holding out the bloody thorn.

He continued to glare. “As you should be,” he said, though his voice was weak and his expression was odd.

He raised his un-wounded hand and snapped—and she appeared in a puff of purple smoke, though empty-handed now, in the center of her library.

She wanted to giggle at his look as he’d sent her off: dazed and hunted with a hint of smile playing at the corners of his lips.

Instead she found herself reaching to touch her own lips, thinking of the kiss that was only supposed to have been a distraction. She hadn’t actually thought he’d even let her kiss him—the effort itself was to have been the trick.

But he _had_ let her and then he’d kissed her back. As she brushed her fingers timidly over her mouth she wondered if her expression now was as odd as his had been.

**Author's Note:**

> Really it's the slave and the lion. Specifically Androcles and the Lion. (The Slave and the Lion just didn't feel very fluffy.)


End file.
